Finding Your Zivug (Mate) Yitzchok & Rivka: The Torah's View of Finding a Mate by RABBI JEFF FORSYTHE
This article is pretty good and it brings to mind the following implication. If success in marriage is dependent largely on the wife’s inclination to do chesed, how does a man figure out if the woman he is doing is so inclined? Dating in America, particularly in New York, consists of the man doing EVERYTHING. This ranges from approaching the woman at a singles event (where she likely sits in a circle with her friends), to calling the shadchan (women generally wait to be called), to calling the woman, to driving to her, to finding an activity that pleases her (many times women complain afterward to the shadchan about his choices), to possibly then driving from her house to the activity which many women require to be in another city (she lives in Passaic but forces him to drive to Teaneck even though he came in from Brooklyn), to making sure she is irrigated, fed, warm or cool, and generally completely comfortable throughout the date. When the date is over she is asked, how did he treat you? He is asked, how did you treat her? Every phone call after that is initiated by him. She’ll only call back. He has to ask her out again and do this all over again. The contrast between their orientation is so extreme that one time when I asked a woman (after 5 dates) if we could talk about the relationship, she said that was my job to do, not hers. Even that fell on that man in her opinion. How can a man figure out if the woman is selfish if the entire structure of dating is that the woman takes? And the answer is, he really can’t. In the old days, in the old West or wherever, the gentleman would come calling and the lady would make a picnic. She contributed something. In frum dating, the woman contributes next to nothing. In my experience, the woman don’t contribute to the conversation either. They expect the man to drive that and to do it perfectly. If she asks him anything, mostly it’s to grade him on his religiosity, his closeness to his family, his earning power. Sound cynical. This is how it works. This is the reality. I used to keep a spreadsheet to record which women said thank you after I took them out. It was 15%. 85% didn’t even say thank you. This is the madness of frum society today when it comes to shiduchim. On top of that is all the prejudicial slander of the men, that there are more good women and all that nonsense. They make the women paranoid about the men, as well as condescending toward them.
No comments:
Post a Comment